#albert's library

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Albert's Magical Library #3:

The Rebirth of Witchcraft by Doreen Valiente

Essential reading. Absolutely fabulous. Valiente tells the story of the Pagan revival in the 50s onwards.

Valiente was part of Gardener's original coven, then worked with Cochrane - I think in her lifetime she initiated into four different traditions, so she is the girl with the dirt on what went down. Additionally, she's a great writer - she knows how to tell a good yarn, and successfully balances autobiographical details with telling an impartial history. She exposes lies confidently - and as one might imagine, the sorts of men who make up their own religion tell them in spades. She has a section on Alex Sanders, “King of the Witches”, and various other high-profile figures; the penultimate chapter is on Feminist Witchcraft, and the movements of the 70s and 80s. She puts a lot of stuff one is vaguely aware of into context - for example, she ruthlessly identifies all of Gardener's original sources for Wicca, talking about Aradia, Murray, Crowley, Freemasonry and so on. You probably know bits of this, but it's a pleasure for Grand Ma'am Doreen to take you through it in detail. She also has allll the T on the schisms, the infighting, the big personalities: very juicy. Valiente was surrounded for her entire magical career by a succession of famous men who revered the Sacred Feminine, but didn't seem to like real women all that much, but she talks about it with a clarity and grace and, as far as I can tell, gives an honest appraisal of these figures' good and bad qualities. Of course, Valiente is also teaching us about herself. Valiente is really underrated as a figure in early witchcraft - but she was Gardener's High Priestess, she helped write a lot of the most beautiful chants and spells from that time, she was a leader and creator as much as a participant and biographer. She was involved until the end of her life in Pagan activism.   I think Wicca gets a bad rap on this site; a lot of people are unecessarily and pre-emptively hostile towards it, presumably because they were all Wiccan teenagers and are very embarassed about it. I think the rather muted way Wicca has been written about in the 90s and onwards does a real disservice to Wicca-as-practiced, and this book gives you a window into how complex and vivid the craft was as imagined by its early practicioners. It's vibrant and earthy, and so alive. I learnt my Wicca from geocities websites and Scott Cunningham, and no one ever conveyed that it could feel like this. Valiente's craft has a lot in common with things “friendly not all witches are Wiccan” witches are doing today: looking at primary sources, folklore, traditional practices and so on. She gives tantalising details of practices, tools and original sources - all of which will empower whatever craft you're doing, and give you ideas. She has whole chapters on traditional witchcraft, snatches of poetry, details from her own clairvoyant practices, descriptions of rituals she participated in. This is not a “how to be a witch” book, but you WILL want to use some of it all the same. (I re-read it for the review, and noticed three or four things I thought I'd invented for Fencraft which are, in fact, Valiente's ideas. It made me feel really empowered, like I too could be an Important Witch With Big Ideas instead of humbly doing what I was told) She also has a lot of wisdom scattered throughout the book on the challenges of working in community: themes such as secrecy vs openness, authoritarian coven leaders, witches who crave fame and attention, sexism, sex, abuses of power,come up over and over again. Her voice is well worth heeding. Great book. Really re-readable too; I just took it down to refresh my memory, and accidently re-read the whole thing. Both to spend time with the author, and to make more notes. Get a copy if you can. (note: in the chapter on Feminist Witchcraft, she dedicates a page to the life and ideas of Z Budapest who, I believe, has been involved in spats about transmisogyny more recently. Valiente makes no comment on this, although she does write a strong defence of LGB people's place in Paganism, and about how her views have changed over time. I feel like this is probably a needed warning so no one is surprised by it; but please don't make this a reason to skip this book. This is absolutely essential reading for 201 level Pagans who want to know more about the context and history of what they are doing, I can't recommend it highly enough.)

[petitalbert-blog]

Albert’s Magical Library #2:

Witchcraft: A Tradition Renewed by Evan John Jones with Doreen Valiente

Not recommended, and disappointing. This book is the best record we have of Robert Cochrane’s craft, a British magic tradition slightly post Gardener. Cochrane has a reputation of being slightly harder edged, and an early “traditional craft” person.

This book didn’t give me what I was looking for at all, although I’m glad to have learnt more about an early pagan revival tradition. Rituals as described assume a coven, and a very hierarchical one at that. Although Cochrane has some unique practices, and is more closely based on Murray, it’s nevertheless a close variant of ceremonial Wicca and nowhere near as different as I hoped. And although Cochrane is often described as a more ecstatic/direct tradition, that doesn’t come across on the page - I guess he must have had an imposing presence and gift for leading ritual which doesn’t translate at all.

Expect a chapter on the importance of the ritual tools, etc etc, and stuff about gender, the Great Rite, elemental officers, and scripts for rituals which you can’t perform on your own, but wouldn’t want to anyway because it contains things like:

The Lady: Has everything been done according to our way? Officer of the East: all is done as has been ordered, my Lady. The Lady: now take this our chalice to its appointed place.

Additionally - this book is expensive. I was lucky to find one for £18.

All in all, this wasn’t what I was looking for. That doesnt make it a bad book, but I suspect anyone looking into Cochrane’s Craft are looking for similar things to me, and you won’t find it in this book.

(Given that this book is expensive and rare, I am happy to answer questions or look up information in it for anyone who asks. Please do send asks, and I’ll answer as best I can from the book - or let you know if it doesn’t have any details on your query)

[petitalbert-blog]

Albert's Magical Library #1:

The Museum of Lost Wonder by Jeff Hoke.

Incredible hard-back book, taking you through an imaginary museum: the Museum of Lost Wonder. Hoke is interested in alchemical history, so each Hall of the museum is dedicated to part of the alchemical process. That picture is the Hall of Calcinatio, related to fire and technology. Each chapter has activities to help you explore yourself and, joy of joys, a model to build. Really Good Models. He emphasises exploration, self discovery and play; it's not a neo Pagan book by any sense, but you can use it as one. The Hall of Mortificatio helps you explore death, endings, and the troubling history of museums.

I believe in the Museum as a real place - Hoke is also a great artist - and reading the book operates as a kind of memory palace for concepts and ideas. I do stroll the halls often. I think he'd be pleased about that; he talks about the 3D models as being part of the process of making something real from something imagined. In general, if you are interested in paths focused on self improvement, or any Western Esoteric/ceremonial path, this is a really gentle and even moving, and incredibly clever way to start playing with those ideas. Anyone could enjoy this book, including like children, which puts it a serious cut above 100% of other books about this kind of tradition, which revel in being obtuse and impossible.

I also read it when I'm sad sometimes. Even though the self-reflection in the book is simple and gentle, I actually find the process of pretending to be in another place - a place which is really a book - very soothing. I imagine the Museum huge and empty, my feet echoing in the empty halls. It's peaceful there.

You can also buy the models separately if you do not want to damage the book.

This book was the first gift I ever got from the boyfriend who dumped me under horrible circumstances. That I still have this book on my shelf is a testament to what a fabulous thing it is.

[petitalbert-blog]

Albert's Magical Library #7

Poisonous Plants in Great Britain - by Fredrick Gillam

Lovely little book - looks great on the shelf, accurate information and a sober, mature tone. I keep it in the kitchen with my recipe books.

This book exemplifies what I want to see from writing on poisons. It's unshowy, mature, with a focus on the chemicals and compounds produced by these plants, and how they work. It's such a damn tonic compared to the poison writing online - which is big on prose poetry and slight on facts. “Panther Cap contains very high amounts of muscimol and ibotenic acid, and when ingested affects the central nervous system...” This is information I can work with! For each plant, there is a beautiful black and white woodcut or illustration from a classic botanical book. The author provides some historic and mythic information, and a bit of science on how the plant can make you sick or kill you. He also has a section on plants poisonous to different animals, and on the scientific mechanisms by which death comes. It's beautiful to handle, and haunting to read. How something so beautiful, so apparently inert, interchangeable with so many other flowers of the field, is just waiting there - not because it wants to kill anybody, but because it is part of nature and exists for itself - utterly indifferent and unaware of its power. It's definitely not a book you can “use” - either for identifying the plants, or if you wished, for using them (he recommends some good field guides for identification intead). Yet I'm really inspired by it all the same. My Paganism is intensely nature-focused, and I love the skills this book adds to my repetoire. A green path encompasses so much: growing plants for consumption, learning how to heal, learning how to recognise and respect plants in the ecosystem around you and the way they interact. I do see poisonous plants as part of a green witch's way - but not necessarily for use. Knowing what these plants are, and how to recognise them, can be a matter of life and death for you, your animals, and above all for children, whose natural curiosity and small size makes them particularly vulnerable. I'm really looking forward to going out and looking for some of these plants, learning to recognise them in the wild; and I have already spotted an arum lily in the woods. As someone with a history with poisons, it taps into my sense of body horror and nightmare in a really intense way, even though it is so simple and so unfrilly. I think in part BECAUSE it is unfrilly: I view the author as a reliable and experienced source, who treats his readers like grown ups by laying out the facts straightforwardly. I connect to this book in a way I often struggle to with prominent poison blogger writing; the artistry and exaggeration coming out of that tradition doesn't speak to my experience of what poisons are at all. I have a lot of Big Emotions associated with the poison path - and its nothing to do with the plants or the poisons, it's exclusively about the people, and the unsettling sense they are all jostling to be the next Regina George, and that they want me to buy into the fantasy of their power and their identity as Real Witches at the expense of my own. That doesn't make an interest in poisons wrong - because it is a part of traditional herbal paths, and of any witchery focused on the natural world of which poison plants are a part. For me, at least though, it does make a lot of the ways poisons are written about online wrong, profoundly wrong.

(Either you can work poisons in private, OR you can protest the neglect of these arts by teaching what you can and contributing to a shared knowledge base. Protesting that everyone sanitises witchcraft and ignorantly sees these plants as unsafe, when you know they are perfectly safe when handled correctly - but then refusing to say how to do that - is the worst of both worlds, and to me undermines claims to have any kind of skill at all (You can walk on water? Sounds legit.) What I want to see is - if you're a person with these skills, and who wants to see them revived as part of modern witch traditions, contribute to a public, collective knowledge base, rather like Erowid does for drugs, where contributors can say “I took this dose of this plant under these circumstances, and I am this body weight and have these other health issues and these were the effects” and over time, we can work out together what the safe-ish doses are. Like the sciences do when assessing medications for human use. They do a peer-reviewed study, open for anyone to read, involving as many test subjects as possible. (I don't accept “you have to do the work” or “these recipes were confided to me in private” or “ugh modern pagans want everything now now now without effort” as good excuses when health is a factor!)) So the most important thing to me about this little book is - I feel welcomed. It isn't elitist. I feel inspired to learn more about the plants as plants, and maybe work with them as symbols - but at a very respectful distance. I've learnt more from it than my last five years of following tradcraft people. Those blogs tend to make me feel both a desperate desire to work with these plants, and a sense of being shut out and being-made-small. This book, on the other hand, makes me feel smart and competent, welcomed in as an equal, informed - and no desire to handle the plants at all. I feel like the latter is the right balance of emotions to have.

[petitalbert-blog]

Albert's Magical Library #6:

Promethea by Alan Moore/JH WIlliams III/Mick Gray

Superhero comic teaching the fundamentals of Western Esoteric Magic. Bonkers.

I wish I was Alan Moore. Apparently, people will publish anything with the name “Alan Moore” on the cover, and consequently no-one batted an eye when he showed up with “...and in this issue, the heroine will travel through an imaginary landscape to learn about each Tarot Trump in turn”. (A statistically improbable number of British comic luminaries are also magicians.)   Promethea is a superhero comic. It tells the story of literature student Sophie, who is studying a recurring character called Promethea that mysteriously shows up in the work of a soppy Victorian poet; an Enid-Blightonesque children's author; a Wonder Womanish pulp comic, and so on. Sophie discovers that Promethea is, in fact, the personification of inspiration, a living entity in the realm of imagination - and that the authors of those works, or the women who inspired them, “were” Promethea in each generation, as Sophie is now. Moore uses the same trope as Clark Kent becoming Superman, to illustrate Sophie assuming a god-form through the power of imagination. It's All A Bit Of A Mess. There are bad guys who want to kill the new Promethea, and stop her bringing inspiration to man. The story is set in a futuristic, materialistic city, but this story already has so many fucking ideas firing on all pistons that we never really have time to understand the setting, or even why Moore chose it as a backdrop to this story. The superhero elements don't mesh well. There's a subplot about a superhero team called the Five Swell Guys, who passive-aggressively squabble with each other, one of whom is either transitioning to female or accidentally looks female now, I'm not sure which; there's a Joker-like supervillain with killer dolls; there's an ongoing thread about the mutiple-personality-disorder-mayor. Transmetropolitan did this kind of thing much better, because Transmet was about the city, and gave it time to breathe; the center of the story was what happens when modernity starts to eat itself and there is no normal any more and no one has any values. Moore has high concept ideas, but there is already SO MUCH GOING ON. But look, the Promethea stuff? Is really good. It's like Narnia for wizards. Sophie must learn to use the powers of Promethea before she is killed by her enemies. The past Prometheas, who are stories now and exist together in the realm of imagination, take it in turns to guide her. Sophie visits the Immateria and learns to use the four magical weapons - the cup, the sword, the wand, and the disc. You learn to use them too: the Prometheas show what human qualities and aspects are represented by each. In the first two issues, you also learn the tarot trumps, the symbolism of the body and the clothes, the descent of Inanna, the kundulani and the correspondences of the planets and chakras. It's very elegantly done. Aside from these specifics, you learn about the importance of imagination and make-believe in magic; the fundamental underpinnings of what the Western Esoteric Trad is, how it works, why you do it. Moore is a master of how to tell complex, wordy stories, dense-with ideas, and yet somehow still tell them visually. In the tarot issue, where he simultaneously shows you each card; writes a poem; tells the life story of Aleister Crowley; tells the mongoose story; and manages to devise 21 related anagrams of Promethea, shows off his dazzling visual style - you can read the whole thing page by page, or you can just follow one of his threads to the end and then start again, but in any case, it needs several readings to take in. The story is packed with heady oddities (Promethea is an idea, and a demi-goddess, and a character in a story, and Sophie's godform/superhero alter-ego, and also present as the Prometheas from the past who now exist wholly in the imaginative realm keep up keep up keep up), and he explains it with elegance and ease. I'm told that the issue explaining the tree of life can actually be removed from the comic book page by page, and stuck together as a poster. The scene where aging magician Jack Faust agrees to teach Sophie magic on the condition that he can have sex with Promethea, and as they undress and begin to fuck, he explains at each stage the magical significance of the body and the sexual act is simply Astonishing. It has to be seen to be believed. I Can't Believe What I'm Reading I Can't Believed Someone Published This I Can't Believe That - it's actually beautiful, and very moving, I Can't Believe He's Getting Away With This. (what are the odds that alan moore has shagged promethea. 100%. the answer is 100%.) So that's Promethea. I'm looking forward to reading the next three volumes in the series, when I have the money. I think it fails as literature whenever Moore is trying to make it a “real superhero comic”, but the story of Promethea and of Sophie's search for occult knowledge is second to none. Ceremonial and Western Esoteric stuff is dense and wordy, deliberately elitist, deliberately inaccessible - Moore makes it elegant and easy, and very attractive too. If you are interested in this sort of thing, Promethea is the perfect starting point. But seriously. How the fuck did he get this published???? (Content warnings: Moore was writing in that era of comics where, commendably, they start featuring LGBT characters; but it was a while ago, so may now feature them in in ways you might not like. There's that transfeminine character who, as yet, hasn't really been explained - the awkwardness of her team-mates, who keep calling her Roger and staring uncomfortably at her chest, rings very true; but there's some discomfort for me in the way Moore writes her, and in the absence of more information, a sense that she's in the narrative as “an odd thing in this strange future” rather than “a character who happens to be transgender”. There is also a vivid depiction of a gay-panic murder; Sophie's friend who keeps calling her a lesbian as an insult; and the implication that gay writer Bill was able to become Promethea because his imagination is, in some sense, feminine. You can see Moore's attempts, not just to be inclusive for its own sake, but to be inclusive in interesting ways. I think I prefer this to the rather mute and neutered way tumblr often hopes representation will be done; but the risk is always that, if you try to be interesting, you end up offending or excluding instead. Well, I think Moore succeeds in some ways (can confirm: teenage girls call each other dykes as an insult), and fails in others (everything about Roger, I would have handled differently). Like always, my content warnings don't exist to judge but to inform, so ymmv, and I'd still overwhelmingly recommend you read Promethea and ignore parts that bother you, rather than reject the whole thing out of hand because authors breaking new ground and taboos to feature queer characters didn't get it perfect first time. Although if you're very bothered by the (hetero)sexual imagery of magic, Vol 2: Chapter 4 has that one long magical sex scene, which I guess you can skip; but even as someone who dislikes that trend of magic, it remains my favourite chapter because it's just so...daring and out there, and against all the odds, it works)

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Albert's Magical Library #4:

The Book of Thoth by Aleister Crowley

Holy fuck.

So look, Crowley in the original is essentially incomprehensible. His actual ideas are pretty good, if you're into that sort of thing, but you really want to approach him through: 1) Other people writing about Crowley's ideas 2) Aleister Crowley writing about Crowley's ideas 3) Aleister Crowley in the original The Book of Thoth accompanies Crowley's tarot deck, the Thoth Tarot deck. The deck was painted by Lady Frieda Harris, an occultist in her own right, and is astonishingly beautiful. Tarot resources tell you when you find “the one”, you'll know. Oh gods, I knew - these images are haunting and terrifying and awe inspiring, they seem to loom huge in the imagination. This is a scary deck, for cosmic-level scrying. I once made an ex-boyfriend cry and confess to wanting out, just by showing him the Tower card. Such is this deck. The deck is also fairly challenging to use without his underlying philosophy, and I guess, pointless too. Enter the Book of Thoth. Crowley was a big fan of setting the record straight, and correcting earlier occultists with his new, definitive discoveries. This book explains that the Tarot is, in fact, a kind of magical library gifted to man by Thoth (also known as Tahuti), more properly a tool for meditation and discovering occult secrets than fortune-telling. Most importantly, the Tarot deck represents the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. A lot of this book is about how clever Aleister Crowley is, and one clever thing he has done is assign both the Tarot cards and the I Ching to the Tree of Life correctly. (From the introduction: "He succeeded in uniting under the Schema of the Holy Qabalah, of which the Tarot is the single greatest element, all philosophical and magical systems soever, including that of the Chinese. This...[is] without doubt his greatest achievement in scholarship") When Crowley finally gets around to discussing the meanings of cards, it is in fact fairly clever. He brings together the astrological, planetary and Kabbalistic correspondence of each card very satisfyingly with a dazzling array of esoteric imagery, myths and figures to produce very rich meanings. His interpretation of the minor arcana is especially satisfying. That said, you really do need to be enthusiastic about the Tree of Life to understand ANY of it. Additionally, much of the esoteric imagery is drawn from Crowley's religious tradition Thelema, and you really need to be up to speed on that to grasp the full import of each card: figures such as Babalon or the Child Horus have specific meanings in Thelema, and Crowley already assumes you know what these are. Read the Book of Thoth backwards. Trivial little things like “the meaning of each card” and “how to perform a reading”, are right at the back - alongside some really nice charts which you can copy into your personal Book of Shadows and feel accomplished about. The first half of the book are mostly explanations of Crowley's own cleverness in his arrangement: tzaddi is not the Star, and it was prophecised (by Crowley) that someone would discover tzaddi's true correspondence and here, see, the prophecy is fulfilled (by Crowley) for tzaddi is in fact the Emperor. Keep up. There is also his visionary writing/prose poetry, which is as yet beyond my understanding. Still, on each re-reading I understand it better. One invaluable beginner's Thelema guide is here. Wikipedia is also good. And I DO often dip into it: I find religion-as-puzzle-to-be-unlocked is quite satisfying, and enjoy reading it before bed, when I'm too tired to really take anything in or follow a story, but let the imagery wash over me Not necessary as part of a general magical library. Only of interest to Thelemites, OR fools who bought the deck because it looked beautiful and are now stuck learning a hugely over-complex magical system just to tip the iceberg of using it. Good for a laugh.